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What if Walt Disney was the producer of Looney Tunes/Walt Disney Animated Classics/Here Come the Smurfs
Here Come the Smurfs is a 1978 American animated musical comedy film produced by Walt Disney Productions and distributed by Buena Vista Distribution. It is the 27th Disney animated feature film and was first released on September 11, 1978. Plot The film's content is derived from eight previously released animated featurettes Disney produced based upon the The Smurfs comics by Peyo: * The Smurfs and the Smurfnapper (1968) * The Smurfs and the Smurf King (1968) * The Smurf Apprentice (1969) * The Smurfs and the Smurfette (1970) * Romeo and Smurfette (1971) * The Smurfs and the Magic Egg (1972) * The Smurfs and the Howlibird (1973) * The Strange Awakening of Lazy Smurf (1974) Extra material, which Papa Smurf talks with the narrator (voiced by Sebastian Cabot, before his death in 1977 before the film's release) used to link the eight featurettes together was added to allow the stories to merge into each other. Voice cast *Don Messick as Papa Smurf, Azrael and Monty *Danny Goldman as Brainy Smurf *William Callaway as Clumsy Smurf *Michael Bell as Grouchy Smurf, Handy Smurf and Lazy Smurf *Lucille Bliss as Smurfette *Frank Welker as Hefty Smurf and Poet Smurf *Hamilton Camp as Greedy Smurf and Harmony Smurf *Alan Oppenheimer as Vanity Smurf *June Foray as Jokey Smurf *Paul Winchell as Gargamel *Sebastian Cabot as the Narrator Production Walt Disney acquired the film rights to the The Smurfs comics in 1968 with the intent of adapting them into a full-length animated musical feature. However, upon realizing that worldwide audiences are not as familiar with the comics as the Europeans, Walt soon decided to split the supposed feature film into a series of featurettes to give audiences the chance to get to know and love the Smurfs characters. During production, he had hired Peyo to collaborate with the featurettes. Several changes were done in several of the featurettes, such as: *In all the featurettes, Gargamel also have another pet besides Azrael, a dimwitted vulture named Monty, who bears an almost identical resemblance to the Howlibird from The Smurfs and the Howlibird, but with grey feathers instead of green ones. *In The Smurfs and the Smurf King, based on the King Smurf story, it is Brainy Smurf who becomes King Smurf. "His Majesty's" disastrous forest-campaign is eliminated; Brainy's palace is destroyed not by a bomb, but by a flood when the dam on the River Smurf breaks. Ultimately, Brainy realizes that being a good leader means more than just giving orders. *In The Smurf Apprentice, based on the story of the same name, Clumsy Smurf is the one who becomes the apprentice rather than the unnamed Smurf from the comic. *In The Smurfs and the Smurfette, based on the The Smurfette story, the plastic smurfery was moved to after the dam incident and the subsequent trial. With the trial, all the Smurfs are depicted as angrily well aware of Smurfette's treachery and change their minds only when she confesses that she is a creation of Gargamel. Some time after Smurfette gets her new look, Gargamel contacts her and after noting that she's changed, he tells her that he can help her repay the Smurfs with a surprise party by the big oak tree. Of course, it turns out to be a trap. Fortunately, Smurfette arrives late and after discovering that she had been tricked, she disguises herself as a male Smurf, rescues the other Smurfs, and defeats Gargamel. The featurette ends with Gargamel running away from the homely human woman the Smurfs created while Smurfette, with her loyalty now clearly established, fully welcomed in the Smurf community. *''Romeo and Smurfette'' was the only Smurfs featurette to be an original story instead of being based on a comic story. Here, Gargamel uses a magic flower to hypnotize Smurfette and make her decide that she will marry Handy Smurf or Hefty Smurf, thus dividing the Smurfs between Handy's supporters and Hefty's supporters. When Papa Smurf and Brainy discover Gargamel's plot, they decide to save Smurfette from the spell, and the whole village from being destroyed by Handy and Hefty, which Papa Smurf creates an antidote for the flower while Brainy uses a body switch spell to disguise himself as Gargamel. *In The Smurfs and the Magic Egg, based on the The Egg and the Smurfs story, the magic egg is a creation of Gargamel which is stolen and lost by Bigmouth the ogre. After the chaos it causes (including Papa Smurf turning into a monkey and Clumsy turning into a Giant thanks to Brainy, Handy and Poet all wishing to be like Papa Smurf), Papa Smurf gets rid of the egg simply by wishing it to disappear. Later, Jokey Smurf "finds" it again and all the Smurfs hover around it, trying to make wishes, only for the egg to explode in their faces, Jokey having placed firecrackers and other explosives inside it. Also, Hefty Smurf turns into a sausage instead of a hot dog after hitting the magic egg with a mallet. *''The Smurfs and the Howlibird'', based on the story of the same name, Gargamel doesn't appear, and, rather than taking a formula from his lab, Papa Smurf creates an antidote with the remains of the fertilizer. *Smurfette appears in The Smurfs and the Magic Egg and The Smurfs and the Howlibird, but not in the original comic versions. The only featurettes where she do not to appeared were The Smurfs and the Smurfnapper, The Smurfs and the Smurf King and The Smurf Apprentice. Release Reception The film received positive reviews from critics. It was praised mostly for its use of excellent animation and humor. Home video Here Come the Smurfs was released in the Walt Disney Classics video series on September 20, 1991, in a pan-and-scan transfer. It was later released as the last video of the Walt Disney Masterpiece Collection series in October 20, 1999. Songs TV series and follow-ups In 1981, two years after the film's release, Walt Disney commissioned a TV series based on The Smurfs, which aired on NBC (in collaboration with Universal Television) from September 12, 1981 to December 2, 1989 (reruns until August 25, 1990). Production values of the series were definitely lower than the film itself, resulting in the use of limited animation. The show continued to air on the The Disney Afternoon block until 1997, the USA network until 1993, and on Cartoon Network until 2003. The Smurfs is still broadcast on Disney Channel and Boomerang throughout the United States. The show became a major success for NBC, spawning spin-off television specials on an almost yearly basis. The Smurfs was nominated multiple times for Daytime Emmy awards, and won Outstanding Children's Entertainment Series in 1982–1983. The Smurfs television show enjoyed continued success until 1990, when, after nearly a decade of success, NBC cancelled it due to decreasing ratings and plans to extend their Today morning show franchise to create a Saturday edition, although they did not do so until 1992 (two years later). The decreased ratings were the result of the network changing the format of the show, resulting in the final season featuring regular time travel with only a few Smurfs. However, the Smurfs series was revived as a recurring segment in the 1995 TV series Timon and Pumbaa, reviving the Seasons 1-2 timeline. Disney has announced plans to begin a duology of live-action/traditionally animated/computer animated Smurfs films produced by DisneyToon Studios, with the first film released on July 29, 2011. Jordan Kerner produced the film, with the screenwriters including Shrek 2 and Shrek the Third screenwriters J. David Stem and David N. Weiss. The film stars Jonathan Winters as Papa Smurf, Katy Perry as Smurfette, George Lopez as Grouchy Smurf, Gary Basaraba as Hefty Smurf, John Oliver as Vanity Smurf, Alan Cumming as Gutsy Smurf, Paul Reubens as Jokey Smurf, Hank Azaria (reprising his role from the Smurfs segments from Timon and Pumbaa) as Gargamel, Frank Welker as both Azrael and Monty, Neil Patrick Harris as Patrick Winslow and Jayma Mays as Grace Winslow, a couple in New York who help the Smurfs get back to their village. It was suggested that Quentin Tarantino would play Brainy Smurf, but this "didn't work out" so Fred Armisen voiced Brainy instead. Despite the film's negative reviews, it was clearly a box-office success. A traditionally animated direct-to-video mini-film, titled The Smurfs: A Christmas Carol, was released on December 2, 2011, on Here Come the Smurfs DVD and Blu-ray. A sequel to The Smurfs, titled The Smurfs 2. was released on July 31, 2013. A computer-animated Smurfs film, Smurfs: The Lost Village, was released in April 7, 2017 with Demi Lovato starring as Smurfette. Smurfs: The Lost Village marked as the first non-''Winnie the Pooh'' Disney theatrical sequel since The Jungle Book 2, and DisneyToon Studios' first theatrical sequel. Trivia *The film had extremely high-calibur animation and followed the art style closely to the original Peyo comics. *When the film had further releases, the segments' original featurette versions ceased to exist, in a similar way to The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh. *The film was named after the featurettes' opening song Here Come the Smurfs, written by the Sherman Brothers.